Armies of Nine, Book Three of The Adventures of Sarah Coppernick

by SJB Gilmour

  The bat that had followed him, (and which was nowhere near as smelly as he was), flew down and landed nearby. This bat shimmered brightly and there stood a very stern-faced Cassandra Troy, the legendary prophet. Cassandra stood with one hip thrust out and her arms crossed. She glared at her former son in-law.

  ‘I never knew you were the family type, Hardingleflass,’ she drawled. ‘Unlike you to drop in to see a child you’re not even related to.’

  There was a clatter of toenails on stone and Felix appeared. The large Grey Mane werewolf was not looking friendly at all. His hackles were raised and his fangs were bared warningly. He padded forward and took position between Marzdane and the Hazelwoods. He snarled at the smelly sorcerer.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ Marzdane spluttered. He couldn’t believe this! Of all the stinking, rotten… He had never liked Cassandra. The cursed woman would always turn up at exactly the wrong moment!

  Cassandra shook her head. She uncrossed her arms and waved one finger at him as though she was addressing a child who’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

  She tapped her temple. ‘Prophet, remember?’

  David withdrew a large, glowing yellow crystal ball from under his wife’s bed. He held it up so that Marzdane could clearly see a grinning James Isaacs.

  Marzdane was so angry he was shaking with rage. ‘You said you weren’t going to tell her!’ he accused.

  James grinned. ‘I lied,’ he said with an offhand shrug. ‘I do that from time to time.’

  David nodded at Marzdane consolingly. ‘Spice lords,’ he said with mock regret. ‘Who’d trust ‘em?’

  ‘If you knew I was coming,’ Marzdane grated, ‘then you know why.’

  Cassandra smiled coldly. ‘Of course, stupid boy, but Angelina’s not here.’

  ‘Nor should you be,’ Felix growled at him. He took two steps towards Marzdane, snarling even more loudly. Foam flecked his chops and his long and very, very sharp fangs.

  Marzdane sneered at the werewolf. ‘You don’t frighten me,’ he blustered, which was really quite a silly thing to do. All werewolves can be very fierce when they have a need to be. Grey Manes, though usually quiet and serious, are very nearly as strong and dangerous as Black Coats. Felix was young, but he was strong and at that moment, he was very ready indeed to demonstrate his awesome fighting ability. Even though Cassandra, Susan, David and young Alexander were not his pack, his protective instinct had taken over completely.

  ‘You’re even more foolish than I thought,’ Cassandra observed. She nodded at Felix, who needed no further encouragement. The furious Grey Mane leaped at Marzdane. Marzdane tried to dance aside, but Felix was too fast and too strong. His fangs closed tight around Marzdane’s throat. The two fell to the stone floor. Felix did not let go. His fangs dug deep into Marzdane’s neck. Blood began to spurt out in a gush of bubbling red foam. Marzdane struggled weakly and tried to scream but the only sound that came out was a gurgling hiss. Felix set his front paws out wide and his body low with his hind legs high, and began to shake Marzdane like a rag doll. More blood sprayed out of Marzdane’s neck as the huge Grey Mane made to rip his head from his body.

  A large troop of minotaurs rushed into the hospital cavern. The sudden movement did not distract Felix one bit. He kept shaking Marzdane, who was by now very nearly dead, even when the minotaurs threw a bucket of water over him.

  ‘Stop!’ Cassandra ordered the minotaurs as they tried to haul Felix off the sorcerer. Felix, hearing his new master’s order and not realising it was not intended for him, released his struggling victim and stepped back. Blood spurted from Marzdane’s neck in a huge arc that sprayed all over him and a few of the surrounding minotaurs. A nurse minotaur stamped up to him and clasped one huge hand over the wound to stem the flow of the arterial bleed. She looked up at Cassandra desperately.

  ‘He’s dying!’ she accused. ‘You’ve got to help him!’

  Cassandra cocked her head to one side, while she gently patted the bloody Felix on the shoulder to calm him. ‘Why?’ she asked icily.

  ‘This is a hospital!’ the nurse mooed at her. ‘We heal people here — we don’t kill them! Even if he is the enemy!’

  Cassandra sighed. ‘Oh very well,’ she surrendered. She waved one hand at Marzdane negligently and commanded ‘Santicularus!’ Marzdane gasped a long lungful of air as his crushed throat repaired itself. The bleeding stopped and the terrible wounds Felix had ripped into his neck closed over, mostly. Cassandra had put enough power into the spell to stop him from dying, but that was about it. He lay on the ground, bloody and ashen. He began to shiver uncontrollably.

  ‘He’s going into shock!’ the nurse accused.

  ‘How do you think I felt when I found out he was my son in-law?’ Cassandra asked dryly, deliberately misinterpreting the nurse’s desperate plea for help. She continued to watch Marzdane with a look of cruel satisfaction.

  ‘Please!’ the nurse mooed.

  Cassandra feigned disgust. ‘Please? It didn’t please me at all! You have no idea how disobedient my daughters can be. In my day, parents could marry their children off to whomever they chose. Mine even decided to give me away to Apollo, the old bastard!’ Her eyes flared angrily. ‘All over a war that began in the first place because one silly fellow got all cow-eyed and abducted a girl no prettier than the hundreds he had at his feet!’

  David and Susan were both laughing now.

  ‘I could at least have had a choice in the matter,’ Cassandra continued to rant. ‘I mean, winning a war is all well and good and I’d have been quite happy to have been wed to a nice, normal Greek boy, but wed to a god? That would have been awful. We all know how gods treat their women—’

  ‘Mistress Cassandra!’ pleaded the nurse. ‘I’m begging you!’

  Cassandra sighed again and waved her hand at Marzdane once more. This time, she didn’t say anything. She merely sent a wave of warmth towards the prone sorcerer. His shivering stopped and some colour returned to his face.

  ‘Now get him out of here,’ she commanded the nurse coldly.

  ‘My lady,’ the nurse protested with huge worried eyes. ‘He’s lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘That’s his problem.’ Cassandra waved at the waiting minotaur guards. ‘Take him away.’

  Two guards gently led the nurse away from her patient while two more grabbed an ankle each and hauled Marzdane out of the hospital cave. The sight of a bloodied and injured human being dragged away from the hospital made every minotaur they passed stop and stare. As they neared the cave mouth, Marzdane came to and began struggling weakly.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ he croaked.

  One of the minotaurs glanced down at his charge. ‘Dunno yet,’ he grunted. ‘Just somewhere away from here.’

  ‘Why?’ Marzdane wheezed. ‘What have I ever done do you?’

  This made the minotaurs stop and stare down at him.

  One of them snorted angrily and then from memory, he recited, ‘It is the purpose of The Sorcerers’ Guild to provide sanctuary and community to all enchanted beings of power on Earth. Though enchanted, The Minotaurs of Crete are cursed and more bovine than human. No power is within them and as such there shall be no minotaurs within The Sorcerers’ Guild.’

  ‘Sound familiar?’ the other minotaur demanded.

  ‘Wha… What?’

  The minotaur who had recited the declaration shook Marzdane by the ankle a little harder than was really healthy for anyone in his condition.

  ‘You said that, back in Fourteen Ninety-three when we last applied to The Guild.’

  ‘No power, eh?’ the other sneered. He held up his free hand and created a tiny glowing ball that shed enough light for anyone who spent his life in a cave to see quite clearly. He closed his fist and the light disappeared. ‘And now it’s too late. You’re not in The Guild any more.’

  ‘What goes around, eh Marzdane?’ the other said. Then the two minotaurs turned away from the struggling, protesting former Chairman
of The Sorcerers’ Guild and continued hauling him through the corridors and tunnels of the cave to the exit. Outside, they carried him for several kilometres through the bush and rocky slopes until they came to the beach. There, they dumped him in the sand and began loping back to The Labyrinth.

  ‘Wait!’ Marzdane croaked, as waves lapped at his feet. He clawed at the sand, though he did not even have the strength to move himself further up the beach away from the incoming tide. The minotaurs ignored him and soon they were out of sight.

  ‘Wait!’ he gasped again, his words lost in the sound of the crashing waves and heard by no-one except the sea. The sea, of course, said nothing and slowly continued its advance as Marzdane lay, barely conscious, in the moist, coarse sand of the deserted beach. For the next hour or so, Marzdane struggled to keep himself out of the rising water. He was going to die, he knew it. Strange memories flashed before his eyes, all a blur. There was one image however, that was very clear — Angelina’s smiling face. She was looking down at him as he woke the morning after their wedding. It was a memory of her that was his fondest. Delirious, the vision stayed with him even with his eyes open. He blinked and stared out at the image before him.

  ‘Angelina,’ he gasped one last time and then he could keep his eyes open no more. As he slipped into unconsciousness, with the relentless sea splashing further and further up his body, a cold pale hand grasped his wrist and hauled him out of the water.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Captain Angelina Troy, whom Sarah had known for two years as her teacher, Miss Angela Harding, and then just recently as Angelina, shook her head in mock sorrow. Sarah had yet again failed to fire an arrow at the target with any accuracy. Her trainer, a fierce Amazon drill sergeant called Donna Hicks was growing more and more exasperated. After all, the target was only twenty metres away from where Sarah was standing.

  Donna looked at Angelina with a pained expression. ‘We’ve been at this for six weeks, Captain,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m not sure we’re getting anywhere.’ She looked at Sarah who was hanging her head sadly. ‘Normally recruits pick up the basics pretty quickly. I’ve just never seen such bad aim before. If she fires enough arrows at a target, she might get lucky and hit him in the leg or something. It doesn’t make sense. Her shield and sword work is way ahead of the curve. She’s not too accurate when it comes to attack, but I can’t land a blow, so I have to admit she’s already ready to graduate while the rest of her platoon are still months behind.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Angelina asked.

  ‘She’s got more!’ Donna exclaimed with exasperation. ‘I can feel it!’

  Sarah felt awful. She had tried with the crossbow and the longbow. The target, a cardboard cut-out of a man stuck to a stack of hay bales, was quite close but Sarah could barely hit it. For the last six weeks, Sarah had been doing an amazing amount of training. Like other werewolves who had trained with the Amazons, she was forbidden to use her werewolf form during any part of her training. She had out-performed all the young women in her intake. She could run and climb faster for longer, jump further and take more gruelling training than any of her class. She was soon taken out of the platoon and handed over to the training talents of Sergeant Donna.

  Sergeant Donna was a frightening woman. She was tall and more heavily muscled than any woman Sarah had ever met. She was also covered in wicked-looking black tribal tattoos. Those markings declared to one and all that their wearer was born into a tribe known at Anthropophagi, or “Man-eaters” — one of the deadliest of all the Amazon tribes. The Anthropophagi were reputed to have never lost a battle and their soldiers were usually the first picked for any assassination mission. General Sally was Anthropophagi too, however she had not been born into the family of killers and so no tattoos marked her skin.

  That Donna was chosen as drill instructor was a clear indication that she was one of the best of the tribe. Sarah did not feel very comfortable in the presence of such a fearsome killer.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ the frustrated Donna continued. ‘She’s a werewolf! There’s hunter instinct all through her. Her eyesight’s the best in the whole corps! But, she can’t hit a simple target.’

  That made Sarah flush angrily. As a wolf, the instinct was there. As a person, the last thing she wanted to do was hurt anyone. She did not like weapons of any kind. When Oliver had been training she and Melanie, every nasty, destructive spell or Magaeic command she had used, she almost always did so as a wolf. Only because reading was easier when she was human, paws not being very well suited to turning pages or holding down scrolls, did she do any of her studies as a human.

  ‘She’s a werewolf healer, not an archer,’ Angelina replied patiently. ‘She’s not really suited to hurting things unless she’s hunting them for food or fighting for real.’

  ‘I dunno, Captain,’ Donna replied, shaking her head. ‘The kid’s a Golden Mane. She’ll go wolf the moment she sees any real combat. I’m not worried about her safety, but damn it, I’ve got a job to do here. It’s like I’ve hit some kind of wall.’

  Sarah felt ashamed and she hung her head low. Then with her very sharp ears, even in human form, she heard Queen Penethelia approaching. She snapped to attention. Angelina and Donna did the same. Seconds later, when Queen Penethelia marched into the parade ground, all three saluted smartly.

  ‘At ease,’ Penethelia said with a casual wave. She gave Sarah a speculative look for a moment. ‘You know what happened the night Mautallius took your parents?’

  Sarah nodded. ‘Most of it, Ma’am, I mean Your Majesty—’

  ‘Ma’am will do for now. ‘What exactly? “Most of it” doesn’t cut it.’

  Sarah thought hard for a moment as she gathered all the memories she had absorbed from Jasper the night she restored his youth. ‘I don’t know how it started, but I know The Amazons and Packs Jasper and Mannix were there,’ she said with a frown. ‘There were other werewolves there too. They were fighting against mercenaries. I know you got shot, and Mautallius escaped with my parents. You know he’s the one who made the arrow that hit you? I heard some other guy shot you? Stephen something?’

  ‘Stepheno,’ Penethelia agreed. ‘Your uncle McConnell was there too. That’s pretty much the sum of it. Seven years ago, your parents were on duty at the fixed portal to Wolfenvald. Mautallius showed up with a bunch of sorcerers. Grimm, Gint and that cow Molotov were there, as well as that snake called Stepheno. They also had a few mercs. Most of them were goblins, elves and humans but there were also six quicklings that were possessed by felis demons. We couldn’t kill them and the werewolves couldn’t fight them.’

  ‘Demons!’ Sarah blurted.

  Penethelia nodded. ‘Tough buggers, felis demons. They were the ones that did most of the damage to the werewolves. Mautallius and his crew wiped out the rest of Pack Coppernick and nabbed your parents. Then about eight packs showed up and all hell broke loose. I was in the field with Jasper and his Pack when he got the call. I took the troops I had with me and we joined in just as the witches and Mautallius were about to escape. We’d managed to hold them off until your uncle arrived.’

  ‘Uncle Benjamin?’

  ‘The Silver Shroud had the sense to knock Mannix out of the fight so he had time to erect a containment orb around the quicklings. It looked like we were about to win but Stepheno shot me and escaped with Mautallius. We’ve been holding the demons since.’

  Sarah was stunned. ‘How many?’ she murmured, tears beginning to well in her yellow eyes. ‘Ma’am, how many died?’

  Penethelia shook her head. ‘Too many,’ she told Sarah shortly, which was enough for Sarah to know that she would probably never find out.

  ‘But that’s not important,’ Penethelia told her. ‘I came here to get you personally because everything I’ve just told you and what I’m about tell you is not common knowledge.’ She gave Donna and Angelina a stern look that said quite clearly, everything they had just heard, and might soon hear, had better not be repeated or there woul
d be very nasty consequences.

  Angelina nodded. ‘Aye Ma’am. Want us to leave?’

  Penethelia laughed. ‘No!’ She pointed at Angelina with a grin. ‘You’re the strongest necromancer we have and Apollo’s made you immune to demons of any kind. Those quicklings are possessed. If you can, I need you to help us send ‘em back to whatever hell Mautallius dug ‘em out of.’

  As she said this, a small portal appeared and Mannix leaped through it nimbly.

  ‘If my containment orb is going to be broken, Golden Mane,’ he said to Sarah, ‘I would prefer to be close to the strongest healer I know.’

  Sheila appeared beside her mate and First. ‘Most mates would be jealous,’ she said gruffly. ‘But this old dog put a lot of effort into that spell. Even I might not be able to bring him round if it gets busted.’ She sniffed around, wagging her tail and grinned at Penethelia. ‘Penny, old lass, yer looking better than the last time I laid eyes on ye.’ She sniffed and pointed her muzzle at the Amazon Queen’s posterior. ‘Too much laying about though. Ye’ve got a fat arse on ye!’

  Donna gave an involuntary start at Sheila’s casual manner but Angelina gave her a slight shake of the head. ‘Don’t, Donna,’ she murmured. ‘Those two go way back.’

  Sheila changed form and walked up to Penethelia, grinning.

  Penethelia laughed and embraced the older-looking woman who had just insulted her. She kissed her on the cheeks and tousled her grey hair.

  ‘At least I’m not going grey!’ she laughed, hugging Sheila again. The two women laughed and hugged each other again for a few moments then Penethelia turned to the three very surprised faces of Sarah, Angelina and Donna.

  Sheila stopped smiling and in her usual gruff manner, said to Penethelia, ‘Well, we canna stand here all day, girlie,’ and she gave the queen a dismissive wave. ‘Go on. Go get these demons of yours!’

  Sarah realised that for Mannix to hold six felis demons in a containment orb for so long, it must have taken an enormous amount of power. She now regarded the serious Black Coat with even more respect.